Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Birds of the Equinox

Today wasn't a very good day for birding, but I tried anyway. I guess the birds hide when the weather is rainy. I've just recently set my birdfeeders back up, and slowly I'm getting some visitors. When the sun came out briefly this afternoon I saw in my backyard:

2 cardinals

2 Carolina chickadees

1 tufted titmouse

2 mourning doves

1 white-winged dove

I also saw a couple of crows earlier in the day when I walked to work.

This evening I talked Gary into a short walk in the park, Lakeside Park to be more specific. We saw the usual domestic ducks who were mad at us for not bringing bread. The only bird of note that we stared at for 20 minutes turned out to be a green heron. I had a hard time identifying it at first because it was scrunched up on a branch in a tree with the sun backlighting its silhouette. It looked like a football with a beak and legs. When it eventually flew across the pond it looked twice as big as it had.